Thanks, Stimulus Payments: Why Americans are Facing Delayed Tax Returns As the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has fallen behind in processing the millions of income tax returns, that is potentially delaying the refunds owed to the American taxpayer. Here's What You Need to Remember: The IRS is also still dealing with the fallout from the pandemic, and as of March, the agency still had a backlog of 2.4 million paper returns from the 2019 tax year to process. If you filed your income tax return and haven't gotten your refund you're not alone. Some 31 million returns are being held for manual processing ahead of the May 17 tax filing deadline, and that backlog has grown by two million returns since mid-April. As the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has fallen behind in processing the millions of income tax returns, that is potentially delaying the refunds owed to the American taxpayer.